Butterflies & Machine Guns
by Solarism
Summary: Remus Lupin's constant struggle for happiness is contrasted darkly with Darlene Denni's exploration of sexuality and God. Their perceptions provide salvation, always amongst the butterflies. Angsty.
1. Prologue Part I

**Machine Guns & Butterflies**  
By Solarism

PROLOGUE PT. I  
Posted March 13th, 2005

* * *

_Why is everyone preoccupied with butterflies?_

When Remus drew, he juxtaposed butterflies and machine guns, sometimes massacring the butterflies with silver bullets, other times making the butterflies carry the weight of the guns with their fragile little wings.

_ He was not preoccupied; he was enamored._

A light fluttering, a dash of magic thrown on the parchment like an inkblot, and everything was animated and colored and alive—vibrant, dying, falling. Remus spent hours behind the dark curtains of his four-poster, conspiratorially drawing portraits of the Madness.

_ His quill was his savior._

When he felt dark and brooding, he would throw away his quills and promise himself redemption for his sins. A handful of Hail Mary's later and there was nothing left to be ashamed of.

_ A rosary of words hung round his neck._

The noose was tightening every instant; a storm cloud forming eerily at his feet, at his head, in his mind. Remus was not a happy man. Spending every day in his diseased body was a part of the Madness.

_ Inflicted by the butterflies, he drew._

His pulse pounded in tandem, a cycle, a tide, of washing in and washing out: the glowing moon's pull. He writhed and writhed against it, scratching at his face and eyes in repulsion, but there was nothing to tear away. He was bitterness personified.

_ A waxy exterior; the wax of the moon._

Occasionally his ink bottles would overturn, though undisturbed, a reset hourglass begging for his attention. In his moments of misery he would turn over in bed, punch his down pillows half-heartedly, and ignore the dripping ink. His nightstand was always stained a murky black.

_ Stains greasy suds could not remove._

The butterflies and the machine guns were hid away in a crate during the morning hours, a closing time for the melancholy. Remus knew who he was and knew who, at the end of the day, he wanted to fall asleep with. What he did not know was why he was tortured; why, month in and month out, the tide swept, the grains of his humility forming a spiraling castle of sand and dust…

_ Depraved with a lack of normality, everything fires in unison._

A twisted, painful grimace at midnight echoed throughout his dreams. Memento mori, Remus always thought. Remember you will die.

_ Salvation amongst the butterflies; salvation at last._


	2. Prologue Part II

**Butterflies & Machine Guns**  
By Solarism

PROLOGUE PT. II  
Posted April 8th, 2005

* * *

Darlene Denni wanted a religion. 

She craved a God to save her mortal soul, a dark deity to encompass her, to embrace her on the cold nights when a lover could not be found. God to Darlene was a figurehead of a perpetual orgasm. Once you started believing, you just couldn't get out of the ecstasy.

She wasn't particularly interested in goodness. She was, however, interested in sex.

Darlene didn't have a lot of it—sex, that is—because even if one is willing, it can be hard to find someone who is also willing, and who is furthermore willing to do it with you. She knew a lot about sex, and she read a lot about sex, and she dreamed a lot about sex, and she wrote a lot about sex, and she talked a lot about sex, but she'd only had sex a handful of times during her stay at Hogwarts.

She wanted to have sex with God.

It was a fantasy fit for an erotic porno; she could just imagine the cheap budgeting that would come of it. Perhaps they'd get a romantic hero to play God, with a penis several inches too long to be believable, and she bet that he'd be a blonde. She could see God as a blonde, at least in a porno, with a 2 dollar halo above his head, suspended there with a cheap wire. All a part of the budget, baby.

When Darlene was younger, before sex entered her life, she saw a porno and really believed that men were regularly that large.

She had been naïve.

Darlene Denni had a secret passion for these sort of things, these provocative situations and these religious ambitions, and she kept them to herself, locked away inside her twisted little chest, scratching and gnawing at her insides.

She wanted to have sex with James Potter.

She wanted to have sex with Sirius Black, too.

Mostly Sirius, though, because Sirius was more reckless. When he would walk by—no, saunter by, in that devilish way of his—Darlene would watch his hips. They would sway back and forth, back and forth, almost femininely. She wanted to touch his lips, to press them into her body, to ask Sirius if he believed in God and Jesus and if he read the Bible and if he was a good boy, and if deep down, he wanted to go to Heaven.

Darlene liked the idea of Heaven.

When alone, she kissed herself by licking her lips and tucking them into her mouth a little bit, savoring the tastes she found there, and she imagined that she was kissing Sirius, or maybe James, or maybe any boy, or maybe a girl, or maybe a teacher, or maybe God…

She wasn't a whore; she was a teenage girl.

_ Darlene, Darlene, Darlene_, the world thought, _how vague_.


End file.
